“I wonder what she will do with my gift. Some girls spurn my heart; others touch it, kiss it, caress it, punish it with all manner of endearments before they return it to my keeping. Some never even see it.”
— Neil Gaiman “Harlequin Valentine“

It is out light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, „Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?“ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world and there is nothing enlightened about shrinking, so that others won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some, it is in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others. „

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‚maybe we should be just friends‘ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

There is no harder job, certainly performing job, than making yourself vulnerable to the world. And you become a magnet of love and hate and craziness. This is why being a statue is so amazing, you are forced to soak up the world in all it’s highs and lows. It does indeed make you stronger because the more humanity runs through your veins, the more human you become (ah, the poetry of the statue being the most human) and incredibly, the more hate you can stomach the more love you can feel. This is only my experience and my theory. It’s not that you become a woman of steel, impervious to all emotion up there on a box, it’s that you become able to take it and reflect it, and this is why what we do is important. Plus the money is great.
Love
A